Chapter 12: watch the signs now, you'll know what they mean
She helps him inside.
He closes his eyes again, lets her lead him. Every step is misery. But it's all quiet, all distant, and he doesn't care. None of it matters anymore. There's only her and her arms and her warm side pressed against his, strong and supporting him, and every painful step he takes is because she's there with him.
And in every step she takes with him, he feels himself starting to return. He feels there.
He didn't know how far out he was. How close he came to not coming back at all.
The room is soaked in dawn light, and he squints into it, flutters his eyelids, closes them again when it becomes too much. He doesn't need to see. Not yet, anyway. And it's not that nothing is worth looking at. It isn't that at all.
It's that it's over.
Into the bathroom, he sinks down onto the toilet, slumped, head low between his shoulders and lip caught between his teeth, and it slips free in a thick whimper when she lifts his shirt off - careful, so careful, and he catches glimpses of her face and sees her intense concentration, her grimace when his whimper strains into a sharp whine. But he still doesn't care. It's his body operating automatically, responding to pain the way a body is supposed to respond.
He's quiet again as she strips off his clumsy, useless bandages and bends close, examining the wounds. He feels her breath on his skin.
She's so fucking alive he can't stand it.
She's moving. Sighing. There are a hundred things in that sigh and he can't figure out any of them. He winces and twitches when a sting lances into him and then she's swabbing his shoulder and arm with what feels like cotton, cotton and disinfectant. The sting flares, fades, flares again, and he clenches his teeth and keeps still and lets her do what she has to do. And it hurts again when she starts to re-bandage everything, all gauze and tape, but it also feels better. He didn't think the wounds were actually so deep - except for the one in his arm - or so wide. Apparently they aren't. Apparently it's not as bad as it seemed.
Maybe she wasn't really trying after all.
More stinging as she applies the disinfectant to the scratches on his face. Band-aids. It seems like nothing more is necessary.
And she lays her head on his uninjured shoulder and he shudders, finds her hand at his side, and it feels good to cry again for a while.
He's moving in a dream when he tugs her around in front of him and presses her into a crouch and examines her head more closely than he did before, parting her hair and peering at the gash in her scalp in the brightening light. It's clotted, not bleeding anymore and doesn't look like it has for a while, but he takes the cotton and the disinfectant from where she left them on the floor and he cleans it as best he can, with as much care as he can find, and she hisses and whimpers like he did but she holds still for him, and when his hands start shaking it's not unbearable. He wraps up her wrist, wraps it so it won't move too much, and somehow it really doesn't appear to be broken. It's not so bad, and when she gives him some painkillers and he takes them it's even better. Much better.
It's better now.
They don't say I'm sorry. They go back into the main room and he strips off the rest of his wet, bloody clothes and she strips off hers, and they lie down together. In her bed, not his. Hers is nearer the light.
They lie down together and press in close, and they sleep until late afternoon, until the sun is sinking toward setting. The house is quiet. The world is quiet. He doesn't dream. If she does, the dreams don't trouble her.
He wakes up facing her. She's lying on her side, knees drawn up under the covers and her arms tucked in against her chest, and she doesn't look pale and dead. She looks peaceful. She looks like she's sleeping.
He lifts a hand and reaches for her, combs her hair back from her face. Runs his thumb across the scar on her cheek. Curves his hand over the warm slope of her throat and feels her pulse beneath his fingers. She's naked and so is he, and she's so close to him, and it doesn't feel dangerous. It doesn't feel like something he has to fight anymore. It doesn't feel like he has to go to war with himself.
He doesn't have to do anything, except be here. That was all he ever had to do.
I love you.
He closes his eyes again and drifts away.
They wake up. Get up. Dress. In silence he goes to fetch cans for dinner and in silence she makes a fire and builds it up, and in silence they eat. And she eats. She does it slowly and almost as if she's surprised by the act and the process, as if it's new to her. He watches her and as far as surprise goes, he doesn't feel any. He still feels so tired, but it's a loose, eased kind of tired. The kind of tired that simply makes you want to sleep, sleep for hours, days. How sleep might make it better.
In silence they go back to bed and lie facing each other again, and his hand finds hers and their fingers interweave. Hers is warm and small and strong in his. He holds it and he watches her for a length of time he can't hope to measure, as she falls gradually down and down into a darkness that doesn't mean either of them any harm, that welcomes them.
So he follows her.
He wakes in the night, in the small hours. The moon is high and it's washing over her, but she looks too alive to be carved marble, her side rising and falling with her breath. He watches her sleep again, hand still clasping hers, and he mouths the words over and over with a strange kind of wonder.
I love you.
It's so simple and it took him so long.
Dawn again. Soft light - not the piercing, brutal thing he's gotten used to, like the sun itself intends to be gentle with them now. She's not on the deck. She's here beside him, still so deeply asleep. He's not afraid of her now and this feels right, so he pulls her against him, wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. It still hurts, low and burning, heated wire wrapped around his bones. But he can move the arm now, more than he could, and there's some muscle tension in it. He doesn't know what he did to it, what she did, how badly it's really injured, and he still doesn't care.
If he can hold her like this, it's enough.
Breakfast. They still haven't spoken to each other, not full-voice. Not even really a whisper. It has to be this way; he's not sure why and not certain how he knows but it does. They're returning to something, feeling their way back into something, and it can't be rushed.
They weren't too far gone. They get to come back.
But he doesn't know what happened.
He sits on the sofa, unperturbed by the wide smear of the bloodstain her wounded head left on its back, and watches as she moves along the bookshelves, fingers trailing the hard spines. She may or may not be looking for something, and in fact she doesn't end up selecting anything. She comes back to him and settles beside him, and then she presses close to him, fits herself against his side with her head on his good shoulder, and he angles himself toward her and curls his arm around her.
He doesn't know what happened. Whether he knocked something back into place in her. Screamed it back. Whether in the end he did give her some kind of beacon to follow. Whether she found her way back on her own. He doesn't know and he probably never will, and it's another thing that doesn't matter.
He looks out at the early afternoon sun on the ridges in the distance, and he feels her lips moving against the base of his neck, at last speaking, though so softly he barely hears her.
One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. Sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes.
She lifts her head and reaches up, frames his face with her hands. Her eyes are so clear. Not totally right, he notices. They wobble a little. There's a dazed quality to them. She's having trouble. But she's trying.
She's trying so hard.
"I don't want to be dead," she whispers.
My girl.
He lifts his hand and covers hers. Tips their foreheads together and takes a huge breath, pulling her in. "You aren't."
"I don't want you to be dead either."
"Oh, sweetheart." This time his breath is trembling, everything is, and he doesn't try to stop his tears, kisses the tracks of hers when she lets them flow. "I ain't gonna be. Not anymore."
It happened. They don't pretend it didn't. It all happened, and even if they aren't talking about it it's still there between them. All the rest of that day it's there. The day after, wherein they don't do very much but eat and sleep and be together. The damage she did to him. The way he hurt her. The bruises on her, the bandages, the same on him and the pain every time he moves. The things he thought about her. Almost did to her. He looks at her and wonders how much she knows. How he could ever ask her to forgive him.
But he did horrible things to her before, and she forgave him then. She forgave him without him having to say anything. He tried to show her instead, he tried to take care of her, to give her himself, he tried, and she knew.
He forgives her. It was never even a question. They both sinned against each other. They were lost together in the dark.
Possibly they had to be, to bring each other back.
He wakes up and she isn't there.
For a moment there's actually panic. He shoves himself up and scans wildly around, blinking in light far too bright for him to handle. The room comes into focus; she's not there. Not anywhere. Maybe upstairs, but... He turns over and looks toward the door out onto the deck and she isn't there either.
He lurches to his feet and stumbles to the stairs, up them, into bedroom after bedroom, calling her name. She isn't in any of them. Isn't anywhere.
Maybe he wasn't safe. Maybe neither of them were.
But he comes back down and there she is standing in the foyer, closed hand raised level with her waist.
"Beth." He wants to grab her, even with his bad arm, and shake her until her teeth rattle, because she can't do this to him, she can't frighten him like that, please, please don't do that, not when he's still raw, not when he's barely scabbed over and losing her still feels like such a real possibility. So real that sometimes he wonders if he has. If this is a final cruel hallucination before the bullet crashes through his skull. Before they both go over. "Beth, don't you fuckin' dare-"
She opens her hand and there's a flash of silver, and he stares. Gapes.
Nestled into the crease of her palm: Little bird in flight. In mid-song.
"I went down to the bottom," she says softly. "The rocks. All the things I..." She shakes her head. She doesn't want to say it. It's as clear as if she's told him. "I looked for them. All of them. This was all I could find."
He can't say anything. He can't breathe.
She reaches out with her other hand and takes his. "C'mon. Help me put it on."
Later she tells him: she took her knife. She didn't see any walkers.
He wonders - genuinely wonders - if they can't come up here anymore. If what's stopping them isn't the razor wire, or the rough terrain.
If something else is keeping them at bay.
She's still not okay. Of course she wouldn't be. She gets confused, especially in the days after, and he knows some of it is because of what he did, but not all. She gets headaches, bad ones. She goes away for those little moments. Sometimes for longer. She gets distant. She doesn't respond to him. Things are better but she's not healed. What's wrong with her, broken in her - he can't heal that. He knows that now, and really he knew it before. He can't make her well, and it's possible that she never will be fully well again. It's possible that part of her is just gone, or fragmented enough that it might as well be. It's possible that he won't ever get her back. Not the way he wanted. It's possible that he was wrong. It's possible that he has to change the way he thinks about it.
She's kneeling in front of the fireplace, a bunch of twigs in her hand for kindling, and she just... stops. She stares at them, face utterly blank, and by the time he sees her and gets to her she's dropped them and she's lifting her fingers to her mouth and he knows what she's going to do, knows it's not over. Not this part of it.
He reaches her, drops to his knees in front of her, takes her forearms in his hands and holds her as tight as he can but also as gently as he can. Firm, letting her fight him in that mechanical way she has, not letting her win. Calm. Murmuring to her.
It's alright. I got you. You don't have to do this. You can stop. I know you can, you will. I'm here. It's okay. Ain't gonna leave you.
And eventually she loosens, sags, drops against him, and he curls both arms around her, ignoring the pain, and holds her until she stops shaking.
You ain't dead. Kissing the crown of her head, her hands, her healing wrists. We ain't dead. We're here. I love you so much and we're here.
She's not healed. But it's better now.
And he's not well either.
He still has dreams. They're still bad. They still don't feel like dreams at all. Standing in that hallway as her skull explodes and she falls over and over again, and there's so much more blood, chunks of brain and bone, the back of her head a gaping horror. Standing over her as she lies in her bed or on the sofa, or sits and looks wordlessly up at him, and he has the needle, the knife, the gun, he's going to destroy her, he's going to kill her with his teeth, he's going to fuck her to death, he's going to eat her after. During. Whatever broke in him - broke open in him - it hasn't left him, and he knows it might never go. He jerks awake sobbing, thrashing, sometimes screaming, and she's there and she has him, cradles him, sometimes presses him down and lies on top of him, anchoring him with her weight and the sheer physical reality of her, until he's returned completely.
He didn't have to tell her to do these things. She just knew.
You're safe, she whispers. You're safe, Daryl. I promise, you are.
I'm safe too.
Time was malleable before; it is now, but not disorienting to a sickening degree, not washing over him with vertigo. It just flows, smooth and easy, and he doesn't have to keep track of the days. There are long periods of nothing. There are long periods where they just sit together. There are long periods where they lie in bed, sometimes sleeping and sometimes not, sometimes talking but often silent. Sometimes they're wrapped up in each other and sometimes they're simply lying side by side, facing each other, facing away, on their backs gazing up at the shadows on the high ceiling. Turned toward the window and watching the sun move across the ridges and valleys. Watching the rain, if there's rain. Watching hawks wheel and dip and arc. Watching nothing at all.
At some point they go out together - he can't use the bow but they make do - and they hunt, track, take a couple of rabbits. Not much but it's meat, fresh, and on the way back they find a wild mulberry tree and gather as many as they can, fingers stained such a deep purple they're almost black. They eat almost as many as they can pile into his bandanna, painting their lips and tongues the same shade. He remembers a day, after the fire but before he lost her, when they found a mulberry tree and ate so many they were almost sick after, pulled them off the branches and then picked them off the ground, and lay side by side in the shade, and something about it felt so right that he wanted to cry.
He asks her if she remembers. She frowns for a bit, and then she looks so sad and she shakes her head. And he kisses her stained fingertips and tells her it's all right.
He can remember for the both of them.
When they get back and sit outside, skin and clean the rabbits, he sees how she's looking at them. At the meat, at the blood. He sees that she's fighting with herself. Her lips are moving - almost imperceptibly - and he doesn't know what she's saying, not the exact words, but he knows she's telling herself the same thing he tells her. That she doesn't have to do it. That she's not dead.
He lets her fight. He's here if she needs him, but this is something she has to do for herself.
She wins. This time.
She doesn't win next time. Rabbits again, and he turns his back for a moment and when he turns back to her she's lost the battle, bloody and tearing into raw flesh. She's weeping with rage and frustration and shame when he cleans her up, washes her face and hands, and like he did with the mulberries he kisses her stained fingers and tells her it's all right.
She's not always going to win. All that matters is that she tries.
He tells her what he did.
He has to. He can't just leave it unspoken, because there's a chance she really doesn't know and he can't hide it from her even by omission. By the fire, that fire, he tells her what he did to her, the way he touched her, and he can't look at her, tells her he knows it was so wrong, there's no excuse for it, he's so sorry. He could say he didn't mean to but it would be a lie. He's sorry, but that doesn't change anything. It happened.
It's part of him now.
She listens in silence and she's silent for a long time after. He waits. And then she takes his hand, and she still says nothing at all.
She never does. Not about that.
But she forgives him that too. He knows it, even if she never says it, because she shows him every day, just like he shows her he's sorry. Just like she shows him she's sorry, and he shows her he could never do anything but forgive her everything.
Not forget. Never forget. Just like what he did to her when he bathed her, it's all part of them now, and they both have so many new scars, and not all of them are the kind you can see. And they shouldn't forget this. He moves through this strange new world with her and he knows it's something they should keep with them, because what it meant in the end was that they got to come back - or they're coming back now, because they were almost out there too long and it's a long, long way home - and that there are good people and there are bad people and sometimes they're the same person. That never is just another word for until.
They won't forget. Whatever happens after this, he'll carry it with him, like the small, ruthless weight of a knife on his belt.
He still wants her.
He feels it. He feels it every second he's near her - an aching heat deep inside him, persistent, constantly burning. Once he heard about a place where there was a seam of anthracite that caught fire and just kept burning, burning for years underground. No one could put it out. It burned and little by little its heat deformed the landscape, buckled pavement, created sinkholes, vented steam and poisoned smoke. Eventually everyone in the town built over it had to leave. Houses were demolished. After a while there was hardly anything left but the fire.
That's not going happen to him. But the fire is still there. Still burning.
He doesn't think he's going to be able to make it stop.
But that might be okay. Because it's still not a fight. He's still not at war. He can be near her - he can lie in bed all entangled with her, he can settle himself against her back and curl an arm around her waist and bury his face in the sweet smell of her hair, and it's not a battle he has to win to prevent disaster. Maybe she still wants him too - if she really did - and maybe she doesn't. Maybe someday something will happen there and maybe it won't. In any case it isn't time yet. If it ever does happen, it won't be time for a while. Maybe a very long while. Because that part of him - of them - was hurt, almost hurt too much, and it needs to be left alone until it's well.
And there's no way of knowing how long that might take.
In the meantime he can hold her. He can be held. He can feel how real she is against him, how warm, how alive. He can feel her heart under his palm, feel her chest rise and fall, and he knows this would and will be enough for him forever. More than enough.
I love you. They whisper it over and over, as if they're trying it out between them, as if they're learning how. And he might be. He doesn't remember when he last said it to anyone. Even if he's felt it so many times since the world ended.
Not loving enough has never been his problem. Nor has it ever been hers. So that works out pretty well.
I love you.
Tracing every one of her scars over and over, so soft and so careful, adoring them. Adoring her. He's taken his shirt off in front of her before but now, even if it hurts so much, even if it terrifies him and clenches his gut and heart into fists of ice, he allows her to touch him. He lies in bed with her and breathes away his trembling as she follows those cruel lines with her fingers, as she learns them, maps them, as she kisses every single one.
And after some time passes, he's not afraid anymore.
And one night she's sitting by the fire, the last of it burning low and gilding her face and hair and hands, and he's been sitting with her, and just as he's getting up to move in the general direction of bed, she begins to sing.
It's not a song he recognizes. It's not really a song at all, in the sense he thinks most people would mean. There aren't any words to speak of. What she's singing might become a song someday but right now it's flowing and formless, lovely and very strange. It rises dreamily and drifts through the shadows near the ceiling, and then it falls, slips into something gentle and low and sad, sharpens for a few seconds into something desperate and almost angry, and curls up with a burst of sparks to rise again and level out, all smooth curves, unfurling to spread over them like a canopy.
It's these days. He's listening to these days. She took all this unmeasured time, took it into herself, and she made music of it.
He was kneeling. Now he lowers himself, lays his head in her lap and he listens to her as she strokes his face.
He might not ever get her back. Not the way he wanted.
But maybe this way is better.
They get to come back. They are. Here, now. Trying again tomorrow, trying every day, every hour, every minute, every second. Coming back. Leaning their foreheads together in the gentle dark, her arms around him, his hands tangled in her hair. Her voice, his. I love you. I love you. I love you.
You're safe with me.